
Class. 
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CeHfRIGHT DEPOSm 



THE NUMERICAL STRENGTH 
OF THE CONFEDERATE ARMY 



1^1 



THE NUMERICAL 

STRENGTH OF THE 

CONFEDERATE ARMY 

AN EXAMINATION OF THE ARGUMENT 

OF THE HON. CHARLES FRANCIS 

ADAMS AND OTHERS 

RANDOLPH Hf McKIM, D.D., LL.D., D.C.L. 

Late 1st Lieut, and A. D. C. 3d Brigade Army of Northern 
Virginia. Author of '^ A Soldier's Recollections. " 

Exigui numero sed hello mi'vida ^virtus — Virgil 

It will be difficult to get the world to understand 
the odds against which we fought. 

— General Robert E. Lee 




NEW YORK 

THE NEALE PUBLISHING COMPANY 

1912 



■V\\5 



Copyright, 1912, by 
The Neale Publishing Company 



©CLA330071 



PREFACE 

The distinguished soldier and critic whose 
name appears on the title page argues, as do 
various other Northern critics, that the usual 
Southern estimate of the strength of the Confed- 
erate army is too small by half. This conclusion 
is supported, they contend, both by the census of 
i860, according to which there were at the very 
beginning of the war between the States nearly 
a million men in the Southern States of military 
age, and by the number of regiments of the sev- 
eral armies, as shown by the muster rolls of the 
Confederate army, captured on Lee's retreat from 
Richmond, and now stored among the archives 
in Washington. This second line of argument 
has been developed, among others, by two well- 
known military critics. Colonel Wm. F. Fox, in 
his monumental work entitled "Regimental Losses 
in the Civil War" (who concludes that the 
Southern Armies contained the equivalent of 764 
regiments, of ten companies each), and by 
Thomas L. Livermore, Colonel of the i8th New 
Hampshire Volunteers, in his laborious and pains- 
taking monograph, " Numbers and Losses in the 
Civil War in America," published in 190 1. 



PREFACE 

Both these authors have had the advantage of 
studying the Muster Rolls of the Confederate 
army just alluded to, but General Marcus J. 
Wright, of the Adjutant General's Office, War 
Department, Washington, writes me that he 
knows of no Southern man who has ever exam- 
ined these Rolls, although General T. W. Castle- 
man of Louisiana has recently received permis- 
sion to copy the Louisiana Rolls. Colonel Wal- 
ter H. Taylor, of General Lee's staff was also per- 
mitted to examine some of the official returns of 
Lee's Army. 

Although the author of the following pages 
has not had the opportunity of studying those 
precious Muster Rolls, he hopes that he has been 
able to show that the thesis maintained by the 
distinguished critics just mentioned rests on no 
sufficient foundation and ought to be rejected by 
careful thinkers. 

The main points of my counter argument are 
these: i. The lack of arms limiting the enrolment 
of soldiers the first year of the war. 2. The loss 
of one-fourth of our territory by the end of the 
first year. 3. The loss of control of the trans- 
Mississippi in 1863-4. 4. The enormous number 
exempted from enrolment for every sort of State 
duty, and for railroads and new manufacturing 
establishments made necessary by the blockade 



PREFACE 

of our ports. 5. The opposition of some of the 
State governments to the execution of the Con- 
script law. 6. The comparative failure of the 
Conscript law. 7. The disloyalty of a part of our 
population. 8. The necessity of creating not only 
an army of fighters, but also an industrial army, 
and an army of civil servants out of the male 
population liable for military duty. 

The character of the evidence available pre- 
cludes a precise estimate of the actual strength of 
the Confederate army. As Colonel Walter H. 
Taylor, Lee's Adjutant General, says in a letter 
addressed to the author, " I regret to have to say 
that I know of no reliable data in support of any 
precise number, and have always realized that it 
must ever be largely a matter of conjecture on 
our side." 

R. H. McK. 



THE NUMERICAL STRENGTH OF THE 
CONFEDERATE ARMY 

Charles Francis Adams holds a warm place 
in the hearts of the survivors of the Army of 
Northern Virginia, and, indeed, of all the Confed- 
erate Armies, not only because of his splendid tri- 
bute to General Robert E. Lee and to the army he 
commanded, but also because of his generous rec- 
ognition of the high motives of the Southern 
people in the course they pursued in 1861. 

It is therefore in the friendliest spirit that I 
undertake to question the accuracy of his conclu- 
sion as to the numerical strength of the Southern 
forces engaged during the four years of the War 
between the States. In his recent volume, 
" Studies Military and Diplomatic," p. 286, he 
states " that the actual enrollment of the Confed- 
erate Army during the entire four years of the 
conflict exceeded 1,100,000, rather than fell short 
of that number." 

General Adams is of the opinion that it is 
a mistake to suppose that the Confederate 
States were crushed by overwhelming resources 
and numbers. He calls attention to the state- 
ment usually given by Southern writers, that 

9 



lo THE NUMERICAL STRENGTH 

the South had on her muster rolls, from first to 
last, about 600,000 men, and refers to this as 
a " legend " (p. 287), " opposed to all reasonable 
assumption and unsupported by documentary evi- 
dence " ; "based on assertion only" (p. 286). 

His argument is chiefly a priori, and proceeds 
substantially thus: The census of i860 shows 
there were upward of 5,000,000 white people in 
the States which subsequently seceded. This rep- 
resents an arms-bearing population of 1,000,000 
men between eighteen and forty-five years of age. 
To this he adds thirty per cent, for those males 
between sixteen and eighteen years, and be- 
tween forty-five and sixty years of age — 
added by law, so he states, to the military popu- 
lation — making 300,000 more.* Now, further 
add twelve per cent. — or 1 50,000 — for youths 
reaching, between May, 1861, and May, 1865, the 
age of sixteen years, and we have a total aggregate 
Confederate arms-bearing population of 1,450,- 
000. f From this total General Adams deducts 
twenty per cent, for exempts of all classes. 

* Gen. Adams says : " Computations based on the census 
returns tend to show that at the very lowest estimate the 
increase of time of miHtary service would represent an in- 
crease of at least 30 per cent, in effectives. " Id. p. 284. 

t Our critic has made an error here : 12 per cent, of 
1,000,000, i.e., 120,000, so that his aggregate should be i,- 
420,000. 



OF THE CONFEDERATE ARMY ii 

" There were then remaining a minimum of 
i,i6o,oco effectives, to which we must add men 
from the Border States 117,000; giving a total 
Confederate strength of 1,277,000." He says 
also: " The whole male arms-bearing population 
was thus put in arms." 

Now I wish on the very threshold to acknowl- 
edge freely that this conclusion is not, in the opin- 
ion of General Adams, discreditable to the South, 
but the reverse. He holds that the Southern esti- 
mate of a total strength of only 600,000 with the 
Confederate colors, is discreditable to the spirit 
and the patriotism of our people. In his opinion 
a just appreciation of the virtue and self-sacrifice 
exhibited by the men of the South should lead 
us to accept the much higher estimate which he 
gives, not reluctantly, but freely and cheerfully. 
He thinks that we who contest it place the South- 
ern people on a lower level of devotion than the 
Boers of South Africa. 

THE COMPARISON BETWEEN THE BOERS AND THE 
CONFEDERATES 

He says, at p. 239 of his " Military Studies " : 
" How was it under very similar circumstances 
with the South Africans? On Confederate 
showing, they are a braver, a more patriotic. 



12 THE NUMERICAL STRENGTH 

and self-sacrificing race ! " He goes on to show 
that the Boers had in actual service more than 
I in 4 of their population; while, if it be true that 
there were only 600,000 Southern soldiers in the 
Confederacy, there was only i out of 12 at the 
front. This, he thinks, would be discreditable 
to Confederate manhood; he cannot believe that 
the Southerners of that period were a race of such 
" mean-spirited, stay-at-home skulkers." 

In answer to this I shall undertake to show 
in the following pages that Mr. Adams' figures are 
very wide of the mark, so that the proportion of 
fighting men in the Confederate army was enor- 
mously greater than he admits in this passage, 
not less than i in 6 of the population. But 
the fact is that the conditions in the cases of 
the Boers and the Confederates were about as 
dissimilar as they well could be. In the one case 
there was a small, compact population, for the 
most part half civilized, and occupying a territory 
less than a quarter of that included in the Con- 
federacy. They had no highly differentiated civ- 
ilization to support. In the Confederacy there 
were eleven States, each of which was organized 
as a distinct government and each of which re- 
quired a large number of men to fill its offices and 
to maintain its civilization. Large numbers of 
men were also needed, as I shall show, for 



OF THE CONFEDERATE ARMY 13 

purposes of manufacture, and to supply the 
army with food and munitions of war. To 
compare a small community of 323,000 (Boers) 
with a nation of 5,000,000 whites, besides 3,000,- 
000 blacks ; a perfectly homogeneous people with 
one containing divers elements ; a semi-civilized 
people with one whose civilization was highly 
differentiated ; a people accustomed to live on the 
veldt in the saddle, with one dwelling largely in 
towns and cities and engaged in diversified occu- 
pations — is to make a comparison illusory in a 
high degree. 

In confirmation of the preceding statement, I 
add the following passage from a letter addressed 
to me by my friend. Colonel Archer Anderson, 
of Richmond, Va. : 

" My argument was that the comparison of the 
Confederates with the Boers was not fair, the 
Boers being at a primitive stage of civilization — 
a pastoral and agricultural people with no arts, no 
culture, and no wants beyond a bare subsistence. 
Such a people can call out a large proportion of 
its population, and in their case there was the par- 
ticular advantage that through their relations to 
the great mining region operated by foreigners, 
they had accumulated a vast treasure and a great 
stock of European munitions of war, and for a 
long period were able to draw what they further 



14 THE NUMERICAL STRENGTH 

needed from Europe through their railway com- 
munication with the Portuguese port on Delagoa 
Bay. You have shown that the Confederates on 
the other hand were highly civilized, with na- 
tional, State, and municipal institutions to main- 
tain, and, being cut off from supplies from the 
outside world, obliged to extemporize varied 
manufactures of powder, cannon, small arms, 
clothing, shoes, hats, and every sort of material 
needed by their railway systems and their people 
at home as well as the annies in the field. The 
maintenance of civil government, and such a task 
of production over and above the yield of agricul- 
ture, required the abstraction of a vast number of 
men from military service." 

It is instructive, in considering this argument 
to recall what a great historian tells us of the 
Helvetii, in their contest with Caesar. He says, 

" The whole population of the assembled tribes 
amounted to 368,000 souls, including women and 
children : the number that bore arms was 92,000." 
(Merivale, History of the Romans, vol, I, pp. 
242-3.) 

Here is a real historical parallel between two 
peoples at a not dissimilar stage of civilization. 
Their numbers were very nearly the same : in one 
case 323,000, in the other 368,000; and their 
fighting strength was about in the same propor- 



OF THE CONFEDERATE ARMY 15 

tion, — ^one in four of the population; 89,000 in 
one case, 92,000 in the other. 

It may be added that if Mr. Adams is right in 
estimating the Southern armies at nearly 1,300,- 
000 men, then we face the remarkable fact that 
a white population of a little more than 5,000,000 
people sent to the front almost as many men as a 
population of over 22,000,000. For Colonel 
Livermore tells us there were 2,234,000 individ- 
uals in the United States army; but of these, 
186,017 were negroes, 494,000 foreigners, and 
86,000 from the Southern states ; so that the 
North only sent into the field 1,467,083. 

Judged then by the numerical standard, the 
patriotism and devotion of the Southern people, 
according to this showing, was to that of the 
North as four to one. And this takes no ac- 
count of the many thousands who served the 
South as mechanics, laborers, etc. 

It seems to be overlooked by General 

FUNDAMENTAL ERROR IN THE ARGUMENT OF 
NORTHERN WRITERS 

Adams, Colonel Livermore, and other per- 
sons, in their estimates of the population 
available for military purposes, that the Con- 
federate States' Government had not only 



1 6 THE NUMERICAL STRENGTH 

to organize an army, but also to establish exten- 
sive manufacturing plants for the equipment of 
the army; for clothing, for harness, for saddles, 
for guns, powder, and ordnance; even for min- 
ing the ore which had to be worked up into iron 
for the Tredegar works and other similar plants 
within the limits of the Confederacy. 

Again, a large contingent of men had to be re- 
tained as railway servants and government clerks, 
and for purposes of agriculture, for it must be 
remembered that not one in ten of the soldiers in 
the Confederate army was an owner of slaves, 
and therefore a very large proportion of the agri- 
culture of the country had to be carried on by 
white men. It is also overlooked that the com- 
plicated machinery of civilized government had to 
be maintained in eleven States with the necessary 
officers and clerks pertaining to their administra- 
tion. (This is one of the particulars in which 
the case of the Boer Republic differs so radically 
from that of the Southern Confederacy that the 
comparison between the two is quite illusory.) 
If, as General Adams insists, " the whole male 
arms-bearing was thus put in arms," one can- 
not but wonder who did all these things just 
enumerated ? 

When these things are taken into considera- 
tion, and the figures I shall present are care- 



OF THE CONFEDERATE ARMY 17 

fully examined, it will be seen that to have put 
600,000 men into the armies of the South — men 
serving with the colors — instead of being dis- 
creditable to the patriotism of the Southern 
people was in reality a great achievement. 

One of the most accomplished English military 
critics of our time, Colonel G. F. R. Henderson, 
author of the Life of Stonewall Jackson, writes 
on this aspect of the subject as follows : 

" Not only had the South to provide from her 
seven millions of white population an army larger 
than that of Imperial France, but from a nation 
of agriculturists she had to provide another army 
of craftsmen and mechanics to enable the soldiers 
to keep the field. For guns and gun carriages, 
powder and ammunition, clothing and harness, 
gunboats and torpedoes, locomotives and railway 
plant, she was now dependent on the hands of her 
own people and the resources of her own soil. 
The organization of these resources scattered over 
a vast extent of territory, was not to be accom- 
plished in the course of a few months, nor was 
the supply of skilled labor sufficient to fill the 
ranks of her industrial army." (Life of Stone- 
wall Jackson, H, 253.) 

Upon this striking passage one or two remarks 
may be appropriate. The distinguished critic 
tells us most truly that the South, by reason of 



i8 THE NUMERICAL STRENGTH 

her isolated situation, had to provide two armies, 
— an army of fighters and an army of workers. 
He might have said she had to provide three 
armies ; for besides the industrial army and the 
army of soldiers, she had to provide an army of 
civil servants to man the offices necessary to 
carry on not only the Confederate States govern- 
ment, but also the government of eleven separate 
States, with their highly differentiated organiza- 
tions. 

Our author calls attention to the fact that 
the fighting army of the South was larger 
than that of Imperial France. Let me add 
that, even if the Southern army numbered 
no more than 650,000 men, it was nearly 
double the army of Imperial Rome in the reign 
of Augustus. Radiating from the golden mile- 
stone in the forum to every point of the compass, 
that vast empire extended from the Pillars of 
Hercules to the banks of the Euphrates, and from 
the coasts of Britain to the borders of the great 
African desert. It comprehended among its sub- 
jects at least an hundred divers races, numbering 
about 85,000,000 people; and yet the historian 
tells us that the entire armies of the empire, ex- 
clusive of some battalions maintained in Rome 

* See Merivale's History of the Romans, III, 416, and 
IV, 298 and 343, and V. 386. 



OF THE CONFEDERATE ARMY 19 

itself, did not exceed 340,000 men,* there being 
at the time among the citizens, exclusive of the 
subjects, 5,984,072 males of military age. 

I have cjuoted Colonel Henderson's admiring 
comment on the size of the army the South was 
able to put in the field. In doing so I have not 
forgotten that he estimates that army at 900,000. 
But his judgment upon that point loses much of 
its weight when we observe that in two distinct 
passages in his Life of Stonewall Jackson he gives 
seven millions as the white population of the 
South, instead of five millions, as it actually was. 
This error may serve to show how easy it is for 
a foreign critic to be mistaken upon a question of 
statistics. Apart from the influence upon his 
judgment of his error as to the size of the white 
population, it is evident, from the passage quoted 
above, that Henderson included in the estimate of 
900,000 many thousands of men detailed for the 
various industries he enumerates.* 

I submit then that these preliminary considera- 
tions quite do aw^ay with the presumption that an 
army of only six hundred thousand men serving 
with the colors, would have been unworthy of 
the devotion or the patriotism of the Southern 

* In the first edition of Col. Henderson's work, cited 
above, he actually stated that the element of foreigners in 
the Southern armies was almost as large as in the Northern 
armies ! 



20 THE NUMERICAL STRENGTH 

people, or inadequate to what might have been 
expected of a nation of five milHons of whites. 

In other words, we enter upon our argument 
without any reasonable presumption against the 
conclusion which it is our purpose to- defend. 
Whoever will fairly consider that the South had 
to provide out of her indigenous male population 
of military age, a fighting army, an industrial 
army, and an army of civil servants, will not be 
surprised if it shall appear from the evidence 
available that she was not able to muster in battle 
array more than six hundred thousand men. 

AFFIRMATIVE EVIDENCE IN SUPPORT OF OUR CON- 
CLUSION 

We arrive at the result indicated above by sev- 
eral independent lines of evidence. 

I. — Our figures are supported by the state- 
ments of a number of men who were in position 
to know what was the total effective strength of 
the Southern armies. Among them were General 
Cooper, adjutant-general of the Confederate 
armies, writing in 1869 (see " Southern Histori- 
cal Society Papers," Vol. vii, p. 287) ; Dr. A. T. 
Bledsoe,, Assistant Secretary of War; General 
John Preston, chief of the Conscription Bureau; 
Vice-President Alexander H. Stephens (" War 



OF THE CONFEDERATE ARMY 21 

Between the States," 1870, Vol. ii, p. 630) ; Gen- 
eral Jubal A. Early (" Southern Historical Pa- 
pers," Vol. ii, p. 20) ; Dr. Joseph Jones (official 
report, June, 1890, " Southern Historical Society 
Papers," xix, 14), and General Marcus J. Wright 
— who now, however, puts the numbers at 700,- 
000 (" Southern Historical Society Papers," xix, 
254). I ask what better authorities on this sub- 
ject could be named than the adjutant-general of 
the army, the Assistant Secretary of War, and the 
chief of the Conscription Bureau of the Confed- 
erate States? 

In August, 1869, Dr. Joseph Jones sent to 
General Cooper a carefully prepared paper on this 
subject, asking his opinion as to the accuracy of 
the data contained therein. General Cooper replied 
that after having " closely examined " the paper 
he had " come to the conclusion, from his general 
recollection," that " it must be regarded as nearly 
critically correct." Is it credible that the ad- 
jutant-general of the army should have given as 
his opinion that this number — 600,000, — was 
" nearly critically correct," if in fact there had 
been upon the rolls of the Confederate armies 
twice that number, — 1,277,000 men, — as Gen- 
eral Adams would have us believe? 

II. — By adding together the Confederate 
prisoners in the hands of the United States at the 



22 THE NUMERICAL STRENGTH 

close of the war, 98,000 ; * the soldiers who sur- 
rendered in 1865, 174,223 ; those who were killed 
or died of wounds, 74,508 ; died in prison, 26,439 ; 
died of disease, 59,277; died from other causes, 
40,000; discharged, 57,411; deserters, 83,372; 
we get a total of 613,230. 

These figures as to the killed and died of 
wounds, and of disease, are taken from Fox's 
monumental work on regimental losses. He 
" conjectures " that nearly 20,000 must be added 
to the 74,508 given above, making 94,000; but 
gives no grounds for this. 

in. — Again the official report of General S. 
Cooper, Adjutant General, dated March i, 1862 
(127 W. R. 963), states the aggregate of the 
Confederate armies, including armed and organ- 
ized militia, officers and men, as 340,250 

General Preston, Superintendent of Con- 
scription, C. S. A., reports from Feb- 
ruary, 1862, to February, 1865 (W. R., 
series iv. Vol. iii, p. iioi) : 
Conscriptions (exclusive of Arkansas and 

Texas) . 81,993 

Enlistments east of the Mississippi River. 76,206 



498,449 



* Gen. Marcus J. Wright puts this number at only 65,387. 
But cf. Mansfield's Life of Grant, p. 338. 



OF THE CONFEDERATE ARMY 23 

Estimated conscriptions and enlistments 

west of the river and elsewhere 120,000 



Total 618,449 

IV. — ' Now compare with these reports the fol- 
lowing statement from the New York Tribune of 
June 26, 1867: 

" Among the documents which fell into our 
hands at the downfall of the Confederacy are the 
returns, very nearly complete, of the Confederate 
armies from their organization in the summer of 
1861 down to the spring of 1865. These returns 
have been carefully analyzed, and I am enabled to 
furnish the returns in every department and for 
almost every month from these official sources. 
We judge in all 600,000 different men were in the 
Confederate ranks during the war." 

This was accompanied by a detailed tabular 
statement. 

Is not this good secondary evidence as to the 
numbers of men in the Confederate Army, 
especially when we remember the statement of 
General Cooper, late adjutant-general of the Con- 
federate armies? He says: 

" The files of this office which could best afford 
this information [as to numbers] were carefully 
boxed up and taken on our retreat from Rich- 



24 THE NUMERICAL STRENGTH 

mond to Charlotte, North Carolina, where they 
were, unfortunately, captured and, as I learn, are 
now in Washington." These files, be it remem- 
bered, have never been examined by any South- 
ern writer. 

Observe also that the " American Encyclo- 
paedia " (1875), of which Mr. Charles A. Dana, 
late Assistant Secretary of War, U. S., was ed- 
itor, quotes General Cooper's statement as to num- 
bers, without comment, thus tacitly admitting the 
truth of that statement. Can it be justly said, in 
the light of these facts, that the estimate usually 
given by Southern writers is based on assertion 
only ? * 

V. — There is a fifth line upon which we are 
led to a very similar conclusion. 

In the work of Lieutenant Colonel Wm. F. 
Fox, " Regimental Losses in the Civil War," we 
find the strength of the Confederate armies fur- 
nished by the seceded States and by the border 
States as well, reckoned as follows : 529 regiments 
and 85 battalions of infantry; 127 regiments and 
47 battalions of cavalry; 8 regiments and i bat- 
talion of partisan rangers; 5 regiments and 6 bat- 

* See a valuable discussion of our subject in a pamphlet 
entitled " Acts of the Republican Party," by Cazenove G. 
Lee, who wrote under the nom de plume of " C. Gardner," 
Winchester, Va., 1906, pp. 59-69. 



OF THE CONFEDERATE ARMY 25 

talions of heavy artillery, and 261 batteries of 
light artillery — in all equivalent to 764 regiments 
of 10 companies. In making this statement 
Colonel Fox assures his readers that " no statis- 
tics are given that are not warranted by the of- 
ficial records." 

As to the size of the regiments v^e got some 
light from the following reports : The Confed- 
erate adjutant-general reports in March, 1862, 
an average strength of 823 men in 369 regiments 
and 89 battalions (127 W. R. 963). Beaure- 
gard's Corps (32 regiments) is reported Aug. 31, 
1861, as numbering 1037 men to the regiment 
(5 W. R. 824). Longstreet's Virginia troops, 
June 23, 1862, averaged 754 men to the regi- 
ment. (14 W. R. 614, 615.) But more impor- 
tant is the legislation of the Congress. The Con- 
federate Act of March- 6, 1861, prescribed for 
infantry companies the number of 104, and for 
cavalry ^2, which gives, for an infantry regiment 
( 10 companies) 1040 men, and for a cavalry regi- 
ment 720 men — provided the ranks were full, 
which was by no means the rule but rather the ex- 
ception. Observe now that in November, 1861, 
the War Department prescribed that no infantry 
company should be accepted with less than 64 
men and no cavalry company with less than 60 
and no artillery company with less than 70. On 



26 THE NUMERICAL STRENGTH 

this basis infantry regiments might number 
only 640 men and cavalry regiments only 600. 
This marked change in the standard of the size 
of companies and regiments prescribed by the 
War Department in November, 1861, as com- 
pared with the Act of March, 1861, lowering the 
requisite number of men in an infantry regiment 
from 1040 to 640, and in a cavalry regiment from 
720 to 600, is suggestive of the fact that it was 
not found easy to raise regiments of the size 
originally prescribed. 

Now in calculating the strength of the Confed- 
erate army from the number of regiments, we 
shall probably approximate closely a correct re- 
sult by taking the mean between the larger and 
smaller number just referred to. But the mean 
between 1040 and 640 is 840, and that between 
720 and 600 is 660. 

Applying this standard to Colonel Fox's state- 
ment of the troops in the entire Confederate 
army, we get the following result : 

Men 
444,360 
34,000 
76,200 
18,800 
16,270 
4,000 



529 regiments of infantry, 840 each 
85 battalions infantry, 400 each . . . . 

127 regiments cavalry, 600 each . . . . 
47 battalions cavalry, 400 each .... 

261 batteries light artillery, 70 each. 
5 regiments heavy artillery, 800 eac 



OF THE CONFEDERATE ARMY 27 

6 battalions heavy artillery, 400 each . . 2,400 
8 regiments partisan rangers, 700 each 5,600 
I battalion partisan rangers 350 



601,980 

The size of infantry and cavalry battalions and 
of regiments and battalions of heavy artillery in 
this calculation, as well as of the regiments of 
partisan rangers, is in each case suggested by that 
accomplished and experienced officer. Colonel 
Walter H. Taylor, adjutant-general on the staff of 
General Robert E. Lee. His figures may be 
rather high — certainly they are not too low. Of 
course such a calculation is necessarily only ap- 
proximate, but the basis on which it is made ap- 
pears reasonably reliable. To' one who, like my- 
self, had personal observation of the armies in 
Virginia from the first battle of Manassas to Ap- 
pomattox, the standard of strength in regiments 
and battalions in the field above adopted, seems in 
conformity with the facts. 

THE ARGUMENT OF GENERAL ADAMS 

Turn we now to examine the estimate made by 
General Adams and quoted at the beginning of 
this paper. 

But first let me say that I quite agree with him 
when he says that if the South had as many as 



28 THE NUMERICAL STRENGTH 

600,000 men in arms she ought to have been un- 
conquerable, and probably would have been so, 
but for the United States Navy. 

That opinion was expressed by a distinguished 
Southern writer. Dr. Bledsoe, Assistant Secretary 
of War, in an article written about forty years 
ago. He said : '' The decisive circumstance 
which robbed the South of the defensive advan- 
tage of its wide territory was the superiority of 
its enemy upon the water." All the water front 
of the Confederate States was " an exposed 
frontier," both ocean coasts and navigable rivers. 
The best authorities in the South have maintained 
the same view with practically unanimity; hence, 
in differing from Mr. Adams I am not influenced 
by a desire to account for our defeat by the over- 
whelming force of numbers opposed to us, but 
by the desire to establish the truth of history. 

WEAK POINTS IN GENERAL ADAMS' ARGUMENT 

Now in making the calculation previously al- 
luded to, it appears to me that our gallant and 
generous friend has overlooked some important 
considerations bearing on the problem discussed. 

I. — During the first year of the war the Con- 
federate Government could not have availed itself 
of even half a million of men for its armies, in- 



OF THE CONFEDERATE ARMY 29 

asmuch as it was utterly unable to arm and 
equip them. The supply of arms and of artillery 
was utterly inadequate for even half that num- 
ber.* As the war progressed the muskets, the 
sabers, the cannon, used in the Confederate army, 
if examined, would have been found to have been 
in larger part captured on the field of battle. 
Pompey the Great is reported to have said, " I 
have only to stamp with my foot to raise legions 
from the soil of Italy." Had Jefferson Davis been 
able by a stamp of his foot to summon a million 
men to the Confederate colors in the spring of 
1 86 1, what advantage would it have been? He 
could not have armed them, even if he could have 
fed and clothed and transported them. As Gen- 
eral Adams himself has said : " The strength of 
an army is measured and limited not by the census 
number of men available, but by the means at 
hand of arming, equipping, clothing, feeding, and 
transporting those men." 

2. — General Adams appears to have over- 
looked the fact that by May, 1862, the Northern 
armies were in permanent occupation of middle 

* I acted as adjutant of the Third Brigade A. N. Va., in 
the Gettysburg campaign. Even then, in the third year of 
the war, and in that best equipped army, the returns 
showed only 1480 muskets to 1941 men in the brigade. 
One-fourth of the command was without arms. 



30 THE NUMERICAL STRENGTH 

and west Tennessee, nearly the whole of Louisi- 
ana, part of Florida, the coasts of North and 
South Carolina, southeastern Virginia, much of 
northern Virginia, and practically the whole of 
that part of Virginia known as Western Virginia. 
The population thus excluded from the support of 
the Confederacy may be estimated conservatively 
at 1,200,000, leaving 3,800,000 to bear the burden 
of the war. Hence the estimate of the arms-bear- 
ing population in 1862, when the real tug began, 
would be not 1,000,000, but 760,000. Of this 
number, one-fifth, as General Adams admits, 
would be regularly exempt, i.e., 152,000; and 
many thousands more were detailed for various 
branches of industry. Doubtless during the first 
year thousands entered the Confederate army 
from this territory — a fair proportion of the 
340,000 on the muster rolls in March, 1862; but 
the conscript law could not operate — never did 
operate — in this fourth of the Southern territory. 
3. — The seceded States (including West Va.) 
furnished the Northern armies, according to the 
returns of the War Department, 86,000 men, I 
dO' not remember any mention of this by Mr. 
Adams, though he alludes to the statement that 
316,000 men were furnished by Southern States 
to the Union armies, including the Border States, 
which did not secede. (The records of the War 



OF THE CONFEDERATE ARMY 31 

Department show a total of white soldiers from 
all Southern States, including Kentucky, Mis- 
souri, Maryland, West Virginia, Delaware and 
District of Columbia, of 295,481.) 

4. — It must be remembered that while the una- 
nimity with which the Southern people supported 
the war has perhaps never been surpassed in so 
large a revolution, yet there was a large element 
of disloyalty, especially in the mountainous re- 
gions of the South. For instance, in the Valley 
of Virginia there were large numbers of Quakers 
and Dunkards, all opposed to war. There were 
also in that region the numerous descendants of 
the Hessian prisoners, who were not in sympathy 
with us. The number of Union men in the South 
who did not take up arms has been estimated at 
80,000. 

5. — It must also be remembered, as Dr. Bledsoe 
said in his article in the Southern Reviezv, that 
" there was also a large element of baser metal, — 
men who begrudged the sacrifice for liberty and 
shirked danger." 

6. — General Adams says that the Confederate 
States passed the most drastic conscript law on 
record — which may be true ; but he is mistaken 
in supposing that this law was successfully ex- 
ecuted. Thus, General Cobb writes, December, 
1864, from Macon, Georgia, to the Secretary of 



32 THE NUMERICAL STRENGTH 

War : " I say to you that you will never get the 
men into the service who ought to be there, 
through the conscript camp. It would require 
the whole army to enforce the conscript law if the 
same state of things exist throughout the Confed- 
eracy which I know to be the case in Georgia and 
Alabama, and I may add Tennessee." (W. R., 
series iv, vol. iii, p. 964.) 

Again, H. W. Walters, writing from Oxford, 
Mississippi, to the Department, December, 1864, 
says : " I regard the conscript department in 
Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi as almost 
worthless." Yet again General T. H. Holmes re- 
ports to Adjutant-General Cooper as to North 
Carolina, April 29, 1864: "After a full and 
complete conference with Colonel Mallett, com- 
mandant of conscription, ... I am pained 
to report that there is much disaffection in many 
of the counties, which, emboldened by the ab- 
sence of troops, are being organized in some 
places to resist enrolling officers." And General 
Kemper reports, December 4, 1864, that in his 
belief there were 40,000 men in Virginia out of 
the army between the ages of eighteen and forty- 
five. (W. R., series iv, vol. iii, p. 855.) 

In support of his thesis that the whole military 
population was enrolled in the Confederate armies 
Colonel Livermore quotes a letter of General Lee, 



OF THE CONFEDERATE ARMY 33 

urging the necessity of " getting out our entire 
arms-bearing population in Virginia and North 
Carolina." But this letter, written October 4, 
1864, six months before the surrender, is strong 
evidence that up to that time the stringent con- 
script laws had failed to get out even in Virginia 
and North Carolina, " the entire arms-bear- 
ing population." (Livermore, " Numbers and 
Losses," p. 17.) 

Colonel Livermore quotes another letter of 
General Lee, dated September 26, 1864, in con- 
firmation of his opinion that the conscription laws 
were thoroughly enforced, in which General Lee 
speaks of the " imperious necessity of getting all 
our men subject to military duty in the field," and 
adds, " I get no additions." (Id. p. 17.) Is that 
statement consistent with the rigid and successful 
enforcement of the conscript law? Is it not 
rather the most conclusive evidence that it was 
not successfully enforced? Or is my Boeotian 
wit so dull that I cannot see the point? If so, I 
pray to be enlightened ! * 

* " The Government, at the opening of 1864, estimated 
that the Conscription would place four hundred thousand 
men in the field." Lee did not share this belief. By the 
end of the year it was, in his opinion, "diminishing, rather 
than increasing, the strength of his army." — Letter of 
Dec. 31, 1864. See " R. E. Lee, Man and Soldier," p. 591, 
by Thos. Nelson Page. 



34 THE NUMERICAL STRENGTH 

The statement is often made that the Confed- 
erate Conscription embraced all white males be- 
tween 1 6 and 60 years of age. This is an error. 
The first Act, April 16, 1862, embraced men be- 
tween 18 and 35 years; the second, of Sept. 27, 
1862, men between 18 and 45 years ; the third and 
last, of February 17, 1864, men between 17 and 
50. Both General Adams and Colonel Livermore 
acknowledge this. Yet the latter rests his argu- 
ment on the supposition that the Conscription 
gathered in all males between 16 and 60 years. 

In further illustration of this subject, I may 
point out that one of the difficulties confronting 
the conscript officers was the opposition of the 
governors of some of the States, notably the Gov- 
ernor of Mississippi, the Governor of North Car- 
olina, and the Governor of Georgia. Thus the 
doctrine of States' Rights, which was the bedrock 
of the Southern Confederacy, became a barrier 
to the effectiveness of the Confederate govern- 
ment ! South Carolina passed an exemption law 
which nullified to a certain extent the conscript 
laws of the Confederacy, and Governor Vance of 
North Carolina proposed " to try title with the 
Confederate Government in resisting the claims 
of the conscript officers to such citizens of North 
Carolina as he made claim to for the proper ad- 
ministration of the State." 



OF THE CONFEDERATE ARMY 35 

" The laws of North Carolina," General Pres- 
ton complains (W. R., iv, iii, p. 867), " have cre- 
ated large numbers of ofificers, and the Governor 
of that State has not only claimed exemption for 
those officers, but for all persons employed in 
any form by the State of North Carolina, such as 
workers in factories, salt-makers, etc." 

" This bureau has no power to enforce the Con- 
federate law in opposition to the . . . claims 
of the State." 

Governor Brown of Georgia forbade the en- 
rollment of " large bodies of the citizens of 
Georgia." The number is supposed to have 
reached eight thousand men liable to Confederate 
service. General Preston complains in like strain 
of the action of the Governor of Mississippi. 

EXEMPTS AND DETAILS 

There is an important report by General Pres- 
ton in February, 1865 (W. R., iv, iii, pp. 1099- 
loii). In this he gives the number of exempts 
allowed by the Conscript Bureau in seven States, 
and parts of two States, east of the Mississippi as 
66,586. 

He then gives the agricultural details, details 
for public necessity, and for government service, 
contractors and artisans, a total of 21,414 — the 
whole aggregating 87,990 men. 



36 THE NUMERICAL STRENGTH 

In another report, already referred to, Novem- 
ber, 1864, he gives the number of State officers 
exempted on the certificates of governors in nine 
States as 18,843. This, with the preceding, 
makes a grand total of 106,833. 

These are exemptions under the Confed- 
erate States' law in seven States, and in parts of 
two States. They do not include the States west 
of the Mississippi. But in addition to these there 
were many thousand exemptions under purely 
State laws. We have no complete record of these 
last ; but in the State of Georgia alone we have a 
record of 11,031 such exemptions. 

7. — We must also consider the large numbers 
of men employed on the railroads, in the govern- 
ment departments, in State offices, and in the 
various branches of manufacture necessary for 
the support of the army and of the people; and 
in directing the agricultural labor of the slaves. 
Factories were started for making swords, bay- 
onets, muskets, percussion caps, powder, cart- 
ridges, cartridge boxes, belts, and other equip- 
ment; for clothing, for caps and shoes, for har- 
ness and saddles, for artillery-caissons. and car- 
riages; for guns, cannon and powder. 

I have already referred to the statement of 
General Kemper that in December, 1864, " the re- 
turns of the bureau, obviously imperfect and par- 



OF THE CONFEDERATE ARMY 37 

tial, show 28,035 "''61^ ii'^ the State of Virginia 
between eighteen and forty-five, exempt and de- 
tailed for all causes." The South having an ag- 
ricultural population, it was necessary, as just 
said, when war came, to organize manufactories 
of every kind of equipment for the army. 

After all, the most important question to de- 
termine is the number of men actually serving 
with the colors in the armies of the Confederate 
States. And even if we admit an enrollment in 
the Confederate army of 700,000, and reduce our 
estimates of exemptions and details for special 
work from 125,000 to 100,000, there remain ap- 
parently for service in the Held only about 
600,000 men ; and that, I suppose, is what General 
Cooper and other Southern authorities had in 
mind. 

We know approximately the respective num- 
bers in the great battles of the war, and I submit 
that these numbers are far more consistent with 
the maximum of 600,000 serving with the colors 
than with the maximum of 1,200,000.* If, in- 
deed, the Confederacy had been able to muster in 
arms a million two hundretl thousand men, it is 
greatly to the discredit of their able generals that 

* Thus, to quote that able and expert authority Gen. Mar- 
cus J. Wright: Battles around Richmond (1862), Lee, 
80,835; McGellan, 115,249. At Antietam, Confederates, 



38 THE NUMERICAL STRENGTH 

never in any one battle were they able to confront 
the enemy with more than So,ooo men. 

But our gallant and generous friend taxes us, as 
we have seen, with casting discredit upon the 
patriotism of the South by our claim that we had 
no more than six or seven hundred thousand men 
in the field. Is he justified in this opinion? Let 
us see how the matter stands. 

THE MILITARY POPULATION OF THE CONFEDERACY 

In the month of May, 1862, as we have shown 
above, at least one-fourth of the Southern terri- 
tory had been wrenched from the control of the 
Confederate Government. In the territory re- 
maining there was in round numbers a population 
of about 3,800,000 souls. The military popula- 
tion then should have been 760,000. 

To this must be added, by the extension of the 
military age down to seventeen, and up to fifty, 
ten per cent. — that is, in all, six additional years, 
76,000. 

[In this calculation I adopt Mr. Adams' ratio of 

35,255; Federals, 87,164. At Fredericksburg, Confederates, 
78,110; Federals, 110,000. At Chancellorsville, Confeder- 
ates, 57,212; Federals, 131,661. At Gettysburg, Confed- 
erates, 64,000; Federals, 95,000. At the Wilderness, Con- 
federates, 63,981 ; Federals, 141,160. 



OF THE CONFEDERATE ARMY 39 

three-tenths by a supposed extension down to six- 
teen and up to sixty, — which gives in the 
light of the census returns about one-tenth 
for the actual extension provided by the law 
of February 17, 1864, viz. down to seventeen and 
up to fifty years.] 

Then we must make a further addition (again 
adopting Mr. Adams' ratio), for youths reaching 
miHtary age in four years, of twelve per cent, of 
the military population, or 91,200 men. This, 
with the age-extension addition — 76,000 — 
makes a total of 167,200, which, added to the 
original estimated population of 760,000, makes a 
grand total of 927,200. 

To this number Mr. Adams would add the men 
furnished by the Border States to the Confederate 
army, viz. (as is alleged), 117,000, a grand avail- 
able total of 1,044,200. 

But this estimate of 117,000 men furnished the 
Confederate army by the Border States (Mary- 
land, West Virginia, Kentucky, Missouri) cannot 
be relied upon as even approximately accurate. 
For example, it includes 20,000 men alleged to 
have been furnished by the State of Maryland. 
But a careful examination of all the Maryland 
organizations, including several companies in Vir- 
ginia regiments, gives a total of only 4,580 from 
the State of Maryland ; and this number must be 



40 THE NUMERICAL STRENGTH 

largely reduced by names duplicated through re- 
enlistments. Applying the ratio adopted by the 
War Department of the United States, we must 
deduct at least 920 men, which leaves a total of 
only about 3,500. Even this I believe to be too 
large. This item alone reduces the estimate of 
1 17,000 to about 100,000. I will discuss this sub- 
ject at length a little further on in this paper, and 
will only say here that there is good reason to be- 
lieve 100,000 an excessive estimate of the number 
actually furnished to the Confederate colors by 
the Border States. Let us place the figure at 
75,000 as a compromise. Then we should have: 
Grand total of men available in the 

Southern States 927,200 

Furnished by the Border States 75.ooo 

Total 1,002,200 

NECESSARY DEDUCTIONS 

Let us turn now to the deductions that have to 
be made from this number. 

I. — On the ground of disloyalty we have no 
facts on which to base an estimate, hence the num- 
ber must be left indeterminate, but it was cer- 
tainly considerable. The chief of the Bureau of 
Education estimates the Appalachian moun- 
taineers in the Southern States at present at 



OF THE CONFEDERATE ARMY 41 

3,000,000. They must therefore have been very 
numerous in 1861, and it is conceded that most 
of them were loyal to the Union. Some Southern 
writers estimate 80,000 as the number of Union 
men who refused and evaded service in the Con- 
federate army. If there were only one million 
of these mountaineers, they would represent 
160,000 men of military age and fitness. 

2. — We must also deduct a large number for 
men exempt ed for various causes, besides the ac- 
cepted exemption of twenty per cent, for physical 
and mental disability. Of this we have no com- 
plete statistics, but there are preserved in the 
War Department Records several documents 
which enable us to arrive at an approximate esti- 
mate. 

Under the head of " Public Necessity " 
w^e find exemptions for railroad companies, tele- 
graph companies, navigation companies, cotton 
and wool factories, paper mills, iron manufac- 
tories, foundries, printing establishments, fire 
department, police department, gas-works, salt 
manufactories, shoemakers, tanners, blacksmiths, 
millers, millwrights, ferrymen, wheelwrights, 
wagon-makers, express companies, equity, justice 
and necessity, indigent circumstances, and miscel- 
laneous. {Id. p. 873.) 

Thus General Preston, writing November 23, 



42 THE NUMERICAL STRENGTH 

1864 (W. R., ser. iv. vol. iii, p. 850), says: 
" The governors of the States do not confine 
their certificates of exemption to officers, as that 
term seems to be used in the law, but extend them 
to all persons in the service of the State, or in any 
mode employed by State authority; and that 
authority is interposed to prevent the conscript 
officers from enrolling and assigning such per- 
sons to the Confederate service." 

He gives a table (p. 851) of State officers ex- 
empted on certificates of the governors, and it 
appears that in Virginia, North Carolina, South 
Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Ten- 
nessee and Florida there were 18,843 such ex- 
empts. 

The civil officers exempted in the State of 
Georgia were 5,478, and militia officers 2,751. 
(See W. R., iv., vol. iii, p. 869.) In the same 
State the exempts for agricultural and necessary 
purposes reached the number of 4,156, making 
the total exemptions in that one State, 12,385. 
(Id. iv. iii. p. 873.) 

General Preston also reports the number of 
State officers exempted in North Carolina, No- 
vember, 1864, at 14,675 (Idem, p. 851). 

There is a report in the same publication, p. 
96, which gives the number of persons exempted 
by occupation, in Virginia, at 13,063. Thus in 



OF THE CONFEDERATE ARMY 43 

these three States we have records of exemptions 
amounting- to 40,123. I am unable to give the 
number of exemptions in the remaining eight 
seceded States ; but if they were at all in propor- 
tion to what we find them in Virginia, Georgia, 
and North Carolina, then we must reckon the 
exemptions in the whole Confederacy as nearly 
120,000, since the military population of those 
three States was only a little more than a third 
of the whole. These, be it observed, were not 
men detailed from the army, but exempted from 
enrollment. 

3. — Estimate of men detailed for special work 
in the various branches of manufacture necessary 
for the support of the Army and people. Here 
we have a difficult problem, but some light is 
thrown upon it by the following report of men 
detailed in the State of Georgia (Idem. iv. iii. p. 
874): 

For agricultural purposes 957 

For public necessities 1,264 

For government purposes 629 

For contractors 141 

For artisans, mechanics, etc 508 

Total 3.499 



44 THE NUMERICAL STRENGTH 

And in Virginia we find this item : 
Men detailed in departments 4-494 



Total in these two States 7>993 

From these figures of details in these States we 
may conservatively estimate the number of men 
detailed for various branches of work in the 
eleven States of the Confederacy as about 40,- 
000.* 

4. — The seceded States exclusive of West Va., 

* A consideration of the portentous difference between 
the number of men borne on the regimental rolls and 
the number actually available on the battlefield, suggests 
that it may be in large degree accounted for by the number 
of men detailed for service in the industrial army. 

Thus in the army of Northern Virginia just before 
Fredricksburg, Nov. 20, 1862 : 

Aggregate present and absent 153-773 

Aggregate present for duty 86,569 

Soon after Gettysburg: 

1863 : Present and absent 109,915 

Present for duty 50,184 

Before Wilderness campaign : 

1864 : Present and absent 98,246 

Present for duty 62,925 

On reaching Petersburg, July 10, 1864 : 

Present and absent 135,805 

Present for duty 68,844 

As to exemptions it was customary to exempt farmers 
who engaged to raise a certain amount of corn. 

Again the practice was extensively pursued of granting 
furloughs for recruiting service. Such men continued to 
be borne on the rolls of their commands in the field. 



OF THE CONFEDERATE ARMY 45 

according to the report of the War Department, 
furnished the United States armies with 55,000 
men. These must also be deducted from the ag- 
gregate above stated. 

5. — Then we must deduct, as General Adams 
acknowledges, from the aggregate number of men 
of military age as above (viz., 927,200, less 80,- 
000 disloyal and 55,000 in U. S. army, leaving 
792,200) twenty per cent, for those exempt on 
account of physical or mental disability, or 158,- 
440. This is the usual percentage, though in 
the French and British armies it has been as high 
as thirty-three per cent. 

6. — Natural death rate in two and a half years 
before being enrolled in army 11,055 (compare 
Livermore, p. 22).* 

But it will be said, and justly, that although 
after May, 1862, at least one-fourth of the terri- 
tory of the seceded States was not in control of 
the Confederate government, and therefore not 
available as a recruiting ground for its armies, 
nevertheless many thousands of men had enlisted 
in the Confederate armies previous to May, 1862. 
Now, it appears from General Cooper's official 

* Aggregate available military population 792,(X)0, of 
which 350,000 in the army January, 1862'. Above figure is 
2i per cent, of remainder, viz. 442,000, 



46 THE NUMERICAL STRENGTH 

report that the aggregate number of men and 
officers enrolled in March, 1862, was 340,250. 
And so our question is. How large a proportion 
of this number is to be credited to that part of the 
Confederacy which by May, 1862, was occupied 
by the Federal armies? H we assume that the 
part of the country thus occupied furnished as 
large a proportion as the rest of the Confederacy 
(a large assumption), then, as the population of 
the occupied part is estimated to have been about 
one-fourth of the whole, we may suppose that it 
furnished the Confederate army one-fourth of 
the total 340,000; that is to say, 85,000 men. 
This is probably a very large assumption, but it 
may be accepted for the purposes of our calcula- 
tion. 

To sum up this part of the argument : Let it 
be granted that there was an available military 
population, first and last, in that part of the Con- 
federacy not occupied by the Federal armies, of 
927,200, 

To which may be added volunteers first 
year of war from territory occupied 
by Federal forces after May, 1862. . 85,000 
And also men from Border States. . . , 75,000 



Aggregate 1,087,200 



OF THE CONFEDERATE ARMY 47 

Deductions from this as follows : 
Natural death rate in 2^ years, before 

being enrolled in army, 2^% ii>o55 

Southern men in U. S. army 55,ooo 

Disloyal, estimated 80,000 

Exempt for physical and mental dis- 
ability: 20% of the whole (after de- 
ducting the two previous items) viz. 
792,200 158,440 

304,495 
Leaving available aggregate 782,705* 

Aggregate 1,087,200 

Now let us remember that out of this available 
aggregate (exaggerated though I believe the 
number to be), there had to be created for the 
service of the Confederate State three armies, — 
an army of soldiers, an army of civil servants 
and an army of industrial and agricultural work- 
ers. If we put the strength of the fighting army 
at 620,000, there will remain for the other two 
armies 162,000 men, — and we have seen grounds 

* Col. Livermore's method of computation, if applied to 
the true available number 760,000, with additions and de- 
ductions noted above, yields a very similar result, about 
790,000. See his book, p. 23, but note on p. 21 an error of 
calculation, where instead of 265,000 he should give 246,872. 



48 THE NUMERICAL STRENGTH 

for believing that there were 40,000 soldiers de- 
tailed for special work, and 120,000 exempt as 
State officers, workmen in various occupations, 
agricultural and necessary purposes, mechanics, 
railway servants, etc. And it may be asked with 
confidence whether for all these manifold purposes 
one hundred and sixty-two thousand men can be 
considered an excessive or unreasonable number. 
To support the army in the field, to equip the civil 
governments of eleven great States, and to supply 
the life blood of civilization in a country of such 
vast extent as the Southern Confederacy, neces- 
sarily absorbed the energies of a great number of 
men. 

GENERAL ADAMS CLAIMS SOUTHERN SUPPORT FOR 
HIS CONCLUSION 

But General Adams supports his opinion by fig- 
ures taken from a recent work, " The South in 
the Building of the Nation." He is thus able to 
show on the authority of Southern writers them- 
selves, an aggregate estimate of 944,000 enlist- 
ments in the Confederate armies — to which he 
adds 117,000, as the number claimed to have been 
furnished the Confederate army from the four 
Border States, making a grand total of 1,061,000 
men. 



OF THE CONFEDERATE ARMY 49 

Now, even if the numbers furnished by these 
Southern irndters could be accepted as approxi- 
mately accurate, the result would be quite differ- 
ent from what General Adams figures. For let me 
call attention to a memorandum issued by the War 
Department, U. S. A., May 15, 1905, in which I 
find this statement : " It is estimated from the best 
data now obtainable that the re-enlistments in the 
army during the Civil War numbered 543,393 " 
(p. 4), which is about twenty per cent, of the 
whole. This number, the military secretary says, 
must be deducted from the total number of enlist- 
ments (2,778,304) to get the actual number of 
men who were enrolled. 

Now, if we apply this same principle and pro- 
portion to the alleged enlistment of 944,000 men 
in the Southern army, we should deduct for re- 
enlistment 188,800; leaving as the actual number 
of enlisted men, all told, with the colors and not 
with the colors, 756,200. And further, though 
we have no accurate figures concerning the num- 
ber of men detailed for duties of various kinds, — 
as clerks, skilled mechanics, gunsmiths, teamsters, 
cooks, etc. ; also details in the medical, quarter- 
master, commissary, and other supply depart- 
ments ; and as apothecaries, physicians, teachers, 
nurses, agriculturists, railroad employees, etc., — 
we know they numbered many thousands, so that 



50 THE NUMERICAL STRENGTH 

this number — 756,200 — must be greatly re- 
duced. 

It has, indeed, been argued that we cannot 
make the deduction which the War Office claims 
in estimating the number of men in the Union 
armies, as stated above, for the reason that the 
twelve-months' men in the Confederate armies 
" were all retained in service for the war " by the 
Act of April 16, 1862. Again, it is insisted that 
" substantially all of the regiments enrolled in 
1861 remained in service to the end of the war." 
" It may, then, be assumed that in effect the term 
of service of all who entered the Confederate 
armies continued from the time they entered until 
the end of the War, May 4, 1865." (See Liver- 
more, " Numbers and Losses," p. 52, 53.) 

The best way to test the soundness of this con- 
clusion is to look into the actual record of some of 
the troops, to see whether or not they did re-enlist. 
If they did, then the same opportunity for error in 
counting them twice offered itself as in the case 
of the Union enlistments. 

I cite then a few examples of re-enlistment, 
established beyond doubt. 

1. The first Maryland Infantry, spring of 1862. 

2. Rodes' Brigade at Yorktown, spring of 
1862; the fifth, sixth and twelfth Alabama and 
twelfth Mississippi regiments. 



OF THE CONFEDERATE ARMY 51 

" They retained their corporate identity, but 
not simply continued over. At any rate, some 
men in them did not remain." (Colonel J. W. 
Mallet, February 16, 1912.) 

3. Bonham's South Carolina regiment enlisted 
for six months. Re-enlisted 1861. (Statement 
of Colonel Hilary Herbert.) 

4. General Dickinson, late Secretary of War, 
remembers regiments which were enlisted for 
three months, and then re-enlisted. 

5. The Eighth Alabama, Colonel Hilary Her- 
bert. He says : 

" The men stepped out one by one and re-en- 
listed, all but one man, and he exercised the liberty 
which all had, of declining to re-enlist. This was 
in January, 1864." 

I quote also an order of General Lee's on the 
subject, February 3, 1864: "The Commanding 
General announces with gratification the re-enlist- 
ment of the regiments of this army for the war, 
and the reiteration of the war regiments of their 
determination to continue in the army until inde- 
pendence is achieved." The fact of re-enlistment 
then is absolutely established. In fact practically 
all of the twelve-months' volunteers re-enlisted in 
1862. 



52 THE NUMERICAL STRENGTH 

THESE RECENT SOUTHERN ESTIMATES GREATLY 
EXAGGERATED 

But it can be shown, I think beyond contradic- 
tion, that the numbers given by the representatives 
of the various States which Mr. Adams quotes 
from " The South," and from other Southern pub- 
Hcations, are enormously exaggerated. 

We may test the accuracy of this estimate of 
theirs briefly as follows : The total military popu- 
lation of the II seceded States in 1861 was 984,- 
475, not taking into account that about one-fourth 
of our territory and population became unavail- 
able for recruiting purposes within one year of 
the breaking out of the war. If we add one- 
tenth for the extension of the military age by 
Confederate law down to 17 and up to 50, we 
have 98,447; and, if we add 12 per cent, for 
youths reaching military age in four years, we 
have 118,137, aggregating 1,201,518. But from 
this we must deduct, as military writers agree, 20 
per cent, for men exempt for physical and mental 
disability, viz., 240,303, which leaves available 
for military duty in the four years of the war, 
through the whole extent of the Southern terri- 
tory, 961,215. Now, if we accept the figures of 
the State historians, we have 935,000 enrolled in 
the Confederate Army; and the reports of the 



OF THE CONFEDERATE ARMY 53 

United States War Department state that, exclu- 
sive of West Virginia, there were 55,000 soldiers 
in the Union Army from these same Southern 
States, which makes an aggregate of 990,000 men 
furnished to both armies, which, it will be ob- 
served, is nearly 30,000 more than the entire mil- 
itary population ! Without going any further, 
this shows that there has been serious error in the 
above estimates of Confederate enrollment. 

But there are several other matters to be consid- 
ered. In the first place, by the spring of 1862 at 
least one-fourth of the territory of the seceded 
States was under the control of the United States 
Army; and, therefore, that much of the territory 
was not available as a source of supply for the 
Confederate Army. This cuts off nearly one- 
fourth of the military strength. Calculated on 
this basis, the writers alluded to make the aggre- 
gate of Southern soldiers more than 200,000 in 
excess of the entire military population! 

Again, the conscript law, drastic as it was, was 
very imperfectly executed, as those in charge of 
it at the time amply testified. The opposition of 
the Governors of Mississippi, Georgia, South 
Carolina and North Carolina to the conscript law 
will be remembered. We must also remember 
that thousands of men were employed on the 
railroads, in the Government departments and in 



54 THE NUMERICAL STRENGTH 

various branches of manufacture necessary for 
the support of the army and the people, and also 
for agricultural labor. It must also be remem- 
bered that there were thousands of men in all the 
Confederate States exempted by State authority. 

If these things are considered, it becomes plain 
that the previously quoted estimates of the sev- 
eral States of the Confederacy cannot possibly 
be accepted as at all near the real facts. 

Let us now compare these estimates of the 
Southern writers quoted with the military popu- 
lation of some of the States : 

The military population of Virginia in 
1 86 1, exclusive of West Virginia, is 
estimated by Livermore at 1 16,000 

Add one-tenth for extension of military 

age down to seventeen and up to fifty. . 1 1,600 

Add twelve per cent, for youths maturing 

to seventeen in four years I3>920 

Total 141,520 

Deduct exempts for physical and mental 

defects, twenty per cent 28,304 

Available military population 113, 2 16 

But the representative writer in " The South " 
puts the number of men furnished by Virginia to 



OF THE CONFEDERATE ARMY 55 

the Southern armies at 175,000, which is 61,784 
more than the available military population! 
Could there be a more palpable reductio ad ab- 
su-rdumf * 

Besides, as I have shown, in Virginia and all 
the States there were large numbers of men ex- 
empt as State officers. This considerably increases 
the twenty per cent, which Colonel Fox says are 
in all countries exempted from military service. 

Take next Florida : 

Her military population in 1861 was. . . . 1 5)739 
Add one-tenth for extension of military 

age clown to seventeen and up to fifty. . i,573 
Add twelve per cent, for youths attaining 

seventeen years in four years 1,888 

19,200 
Deduct exempts, twenty per cent 3,840 

Available military population 15,360 

But the writer quoted by Mr. Adams states that 
Florida furnished 15,000 to the Confederate 

* The ten per cent, addition for extension of military- 
age is too high an estimate in this and the following tables, 
when we remember that the conscript law lowering the 
age to seventeen and raising it to fifty did not go into 
operation until February 17, 1864, by which time the terri- 
tory of the Confederacy was greatly contracted. 



56 THE NUMERICAL STRENGTH 

States army, and the War Office records show 
that she furnished the Union army 1,270; making 
a total of 16,270, which is 900 more than the 
entire available military population ! 

Georgia. — Military population in 1861 

was Ill ,005 

Add one-tenth for extension of military 

age down to seventeen and up to fifty. . 1 1,100 

Add twelve per cent, for youths attaining 

seventeen years in four years 13,320 

Total 135.425 

Deduct twenty per cent, for exempts . . 23,085 

Available military population 112,340 

But the alleged enrollment in the Confederate 
States army is 120,000, which is 7,110 more than 
the available military population, making no 
allowance for the failure of the conscript officers 
to put into the army every man liable to military 
duty, and none for the thousands exempt from 
service. 

North Carolina. — Military population 

was 1 15,369 

Add one-tenth for the extension of mili- 
tary age down to seventeen and up to 
fifty 11,500 



OF THE CONFEDERATE ARMY 57 

Add twelve per cent, for youths maturing 

to seventeen years in four years 13,800 

Total 140,669 

Deduct twenty per cent, for exempts. . . . 28,133 

Leaving available 112,536 

Alleged Confederate enrollment 129,000; fur- 
nished to the Union army, 3,156; total, 132,156; 
which is 19,620 more than the available military 
population, although in one-fourth of the State 
the conscript law could not be executed, and al- 
though many thousands were exempted from 
service by State law. 

South Carolina. — Military population... 55,046 

Add one-tenth as above 5, 5^4 

Add twelve per cent, as above 6,605 

Total 67,155 

Deduct twenty per cent 13,231 

Leaving available 53*924 

The alleged Confederate enrollment was 
75,000, which is more than 21,000 in excess of the 
total number of men available for service, though 
here also there were thousands of State ex- 
emptions. 



58 THE NUMERICAL STRENGTH 

Mississippi. — Military population 70,295 

Add one-tenth for extension of military 

age 7,029 

Add twelve per cent, for youths maturing 

to military age in four years 8,435 

Total 85,759 

Deduct twenty per cent, for exempts, . . 17,151 

Leaving available 68,608 

The alleged Confederate enrollment was 
70,000, and furnished to the United States army 
515, which is nearly 2,000 more than the total 
military population, taking no account of the 
large number of exempts and of the failure to ex- 
ecute the conscript act. 

Alabama. — ^Military population was 99,667 

Add one-tenth for the extension of mili- 
tary age down to seventeen and up to 

fifty II, 500 

Add twelve per cent, for youths maturing 

to seventeen years in four years 11,796 

Total : 121 ,959 

Deduct twenty per cent, for exempts. . 24,391 

Leaving available 97,568 



OF THE CONFEDERATE ARMY 59 

The alleged Confederate enrollment was 
90,000, and furnished to the Union army, 2,576, 
making a total of 92,576; which is within 5,000 
of the total available, taking no account of the 
large number exempted for State officers and 
other causes, and taking no account, either, of the 
number of men who could not be reached by the 
conscript officers. 

Tennessee. — Military population 159.353 

Add one-tenth as before 15.935 

Add twelve per cent, as before 19,222 

Total 194,510 

Deduct twenty per cent 38,902 

Leaving available 155,608 

The alleged Confederate enrollment was 
115,000, and the State furnished the Union army 
31,092, a total of 146,092, which is within 9,000 
of the total available military population, without 
taking account of the men not reached by the 
conscript officers, and, further, taking no account 
of the fact that so large a part of the State was 
in occupation of the Federal armies. 

As to Texas, Arkansas and Louisiana, it is 
enough to say that they were in that Trans-Mis- 
sissippi Department of which the Confederate 



6o THE NUMERICAL STRENGTH 

Government lost control in July, 1863. Hence, it 
is not surprising that even those inflated estimates 
of the number of men furnished the Confederate 
army fall far short of the estimated military pop- 
ulation. In Arkansas, however, the estimate 
comes within 5,000 of the total available, — 58,289 
out of 63,665. 

In the light of the facts just stated we must 
conclude that the Southern writers quoted by 
General Adams have, in their zeal for the honor 
and glory of their several States, greatly over- 
estimated the number of men contributed by the 
same to the Confederate armies. This would be 
more probable a priori, than that the leading men 
in the Confederate army and Government who 
were at the sources of information, and who 
ought to have been well informed, should have 
so enormously underestimated the strength of the 
armies of the South ; but the tests to which we 
have now submitted the figures given by these 
State historians demonstrate their error beyond 
the possibility of doubt. They must be cut down 
by several hundred thousand. A large element of 
this error is to be found, as I have suggested, in 
the failure to observe the great number of re- 
enlistments that undoubtedly took place, 
especially in 1862, when the terms of service of 
nearly all the Confederate regiments expired. 



OF THE CONFEDERATE ARMY 6i 

This duplication, in the opinion of the mihtary 
Secretary of the United States, reduces the total 
by twenty per cent. 

As a sample of how errors creep into reports 
of numbers, it is stated (W. R., ser. iv., vol. iii, p. 
96) as to a certain number of conscripts, " We 
find some men were reported three times." And 
again (Id. p. 99) that the " Adjutant-General's 
report contains an error in which he has accounted 
for 14,000 men twice." 

Let it be observed, finally, that when we have 
reached a reasonably probable conclusion of the 
men enlisted in the Confederate armies during the 
four years of war, we must then proceed to ascer- 
tain, if we can, the probable number of these en- 
listed men who were detailed for various duties 
and occupations ancillary to the support of the 
government and the army. And only when this 
number has been deducted from the total enlist- 
ments will we have ascertained the probable num- 
ber of men actually serving with the colors and 
making up the fighting force of the Confederacy. 

THE CONTRIBUTION OF THE BORDER STATES TO 
THE ARMIES OF THE CONFEDERACY 

It is a difficult problem to determine with any 
degree of probability how many men were con- 



62 THE NUMERICAL STRENGTH 

tribtited to the armies of the Confederacy by the 
Border States. The factors by which it might 
be solved do not seem to be within reach. At 
least, I have not been able to possess myself of 
them. There lies before me a printed " List of 
Regiments and Battalions in the Confederate 
States' Army, 1861-1865." According to this 
there were furnished by Missouri 21 battalions 
and 79 regiments; by Kentucky 16 battalions and 
26 regiments ; by Maryland 2 infantry regi- 
ments and 4 battalions, 4 batteries ; also the Mary- 
land Line, of various arms. But, upon inspec- 
tion, it appears that this " Maryland Line " was 
formed of those regiments and battalions and bat- 
teries previously enumerated. 

General Charles Francis Adams, following 
Colonel Livermore, tells us there were 238 full 
regiments from the Border States in the Confed- 
erate army, besides 132 lesser organizations. On 
the other hand. Colonel Fox, in his w'ell-known 
work, " Regimental Losses in the Civil War," 
credits the Border States with having sent into 
the Confederate army only 21 regiments and 4 
battalions of infantry; 9 regiments and 5 bat- 
talions of cavalry, and 11 batteries of light 
artillery. As to numbers, he estimates them at 
"over 19,000" (p. 552). 

These estimates and numbers of Colonel Fox 



OF THE CONFEDERATE ARMY 63 

look strange beside the estimate of 117,000 and 
125,000, as given by some Southern writers. 
We have already stated that in " The South in 
the Building of the Nation," Maryland is cred- 
ited with having furnished 20,000 men to the 
Confederate army. How wide of the mark this 
statement is, may be seen by inspecting the fol- 
lowing total of organizations of Maryland men 
in the Confederacy: 

INFANTRY 

First Maryland Infantry, number of men. . 782 

Second Maryland Infantry 627 

Company B, Twenty-first Virginia, Colonel 

L. Clarke 109 

One company, Thirteenth Virginia Lanier 

Guards, estimated 75 

One company. Sixty-first and Sixty-second 

Virginia, estimated 65 

Total Infantry 1,658 

CAVALRY 

First Maryland, Colonel Ridgeley Brown. . 74 

Company K, First Virginia ; transferred in 

August, 1864, to First Maryland 197 

Lieutenant Harry Gilmour Battalion, esti- 
mated 250 

Colonel Sturgis Davis Battalion, estimated. 100 



64 THE NUMERICAL STRENGTH 

One ]\Iaryland Company in Seventh Vir- 
ginia, estimated 75 

One Maryland Company in Thirty-fifth Vir- 
ginia, Colonel Elijah White 103 

One Maryland Company in Forty-third Vir- 
ginia, Colonel Mosby, estimated 75 

Total cavalry 674 

ARTILLERY 

Colonel Snowden Andrews 204 

Second Maryland, Captain Griffin 197 

Third Maryland, Colonel Rowan, Captain 

Ritter 350 

In Western Army, Fourth Maryland, 
Chesapeake, Captain Brown, Captain 

Chew 137 

Captain Brethed, Horse Artillery (a Mary- 
land battalion, though mustered into serv- 
ice as Virginian) 75 

Baltimore Heavy Artillery, estimated 100 

Marylanders at Charleston, South Carolina, 
estimated 225 

Total artillery 1,288 

Grand total 4,580 

These figures are compiled from the muster 



OF THE CONFEDERATE ARMY 65 

rolls, with the exception of those " estimated." 
It is to be observed that a very large proportion 
of the men in the Second Maryland Infantry 
were those who had previously served in the First 
Maryland Infantry; so that there is a good deal 
of duplication there by reenlistment. On the 
other hand, there were many individual Mary- 
landers in various regiments accredited to other 
States. We have also the names of 137 Mary- 
landers who were officers in various other com- 
mands. 

The estimate above alluded to, of 20,000 
Marylanders in the Confederate service, rests ap- 
parently upon no better basis than an oral state- 
ment of General Cooper to General Trimble, in 
which he said he believed that the muster rolls 
would show that about 20,000 men in the Con- 
federate army had given the State of Maryland 
as the place of their nativity. How many were 
citizens of Maryland when they enlisted does not 
appear. Obviously many natives of Maryland 
were doubtless in 1861 citizens of other States, 
and could not therefore be reckoned among the 
soldiers furnished by Maryland to the Confed- 
erate armies. 

As to the estimates furnished by writers in 
" The South " concerning the number of men 
furnished the Confederacy from the Border 



66 THE NUMERICAL STRENGTH 

States, viz., Kentucky, 30,000; Missouri, 60,000; 
West Virginia, 7,000; the same unintentional ex- 
aggeration doubtless exists here as I have shown 
in regard to the numbers alleged to have been 
furnished by the seceded States. Unfortunately 
it is not possible to be definite in stating the num- 
bers furnished by the Border States. When we 
observe the discrepancy between Colonel Fox's 
19,000, President Tyler's 117,000, and Colonel 
Livermore's 143,000, it becomes clear that the 
whole subject is involved in uncertainty. I in- 
cline to the opinion that 50,000 is nearer the 
actual numbers in the Southern army from these 
Border States than 100,000; but for the sake of 
argument I leave the number 75,000, as stated 
above.* 

Before concluding this branch of the 
subject I would call attention to the fol- 
lowing remark made by Mr. Charles Francis 
Adams in his " Military Studies," p. 282'. He 
says " that the States named [meaning Kentucky, 
Maryland, Missouri, West Virginia] sympathiz- 

* War Department, 

Washington, May 18, 1912. 
Dear Dr. McKim, 

I think your estimate of 50,000 as representing the 
total number of troops furnished by the Border States 
is about correct. It can never be definitely ascertained. 
Very truly yours, 

Marcus J. Wright. 



OF THE CONFEDERATE ARMY (i7 

ing, as at the time the Southern authorities 
claimed, most deeply with the Confederacy should 
have furnished over 316,000 recruits to the Fed- 
eral army, and only 117,000 to that of the Con- 
federacy is, to say the least, deserving of re- 
mark, — ■ it calls for explanation." Again he 
says : "It would be not unnatural to assume that 
these States furnished an equal number of re- 
cruits to the Confederacy." {Id. p. 238.) 

This statement is sufficiently amazing. On the 
contrary, would it not be most unnatural to as- 
sume tliat these four States, occupied and con- 
trolled from end to end by the Federal armies, 
should have furnished as many men to the Con- 
federate army as to the Federal army, notwith- 
standing the enormous difficulties of passing 
through the lines? Although there was much 
sentiment favorable to the Confederacy in these 
four States, I fear there cannot be any doubt that 
the preponderance of sentiment was in favor of 
the Union; and he must be blind who does not 
recognize the fact that the difficulties in the way 
of a young man desiring to enlist in the Southern 
army, while his State was occupied by the Fed- 
eral forces, were enormously great. 

CONCLUSION 

There are two remarks of General Adams to 



68 THE NUMERICAL STRENGTH 

which, before closing, I should like to call atten- 
tion. He states that the foreigners in the Union 
army were more than counterbalanced by our 
drastic conscription (" Military Studies," p. 246). 
Now it appears from official reports that there 
were 494,000 foreigners in the Union army, so 
that he must have supposed that the conscription 
law produced about 500,000 soldiers. It actually 
produced, east of the Mississippi, 81,992 men from 
February, 1862, when the first law was passed, to 
February, 1865. We cannot suppose that the ad- 
ditions from the States west of the Mississippi — ■ 
Texas, Louisiana, and Arkansas — could have 
been even one-fourth as numerous. The military 
population was about one-third as large, but by 
1863 that territory was overrun by the Federal 
armies. But if we put these at 20,000, we have 
only 101,992, instead of the half million which 
Mr. Adams supposes. And if we should add the 
76,000 men which the conscription officers, mag- 
nifying their diligence, guessed had been driven 
into the army by enlistment to avoid conscription 
we would then have only 177,993. 

Again, General Adams says : 

" As respects mere numbers, it is capable of 
demonstration that at the close of the struggle the 
preponderance was on the side of the Confed- 



OF THE CONFEDERATE ARMY 69 

eracy, and distinctly so. The Union at that time 
had, it is said, a million men on its muster rolls, 
it might possibly have been able to put 
500,000 men into the fighting line. On the other 
side . . . the fighting strength of the Con- 
federacy cannot have been less than two-thirds 
its normal strength. The South should have 
been able to muster, on paper, 900,000 men." 
{Idem, pp. 241-2.) 

Compare this statement of what the South 
should have been able to muster with the consoli- 
dated abstract of the latest returns of the Con- 
federate army showing what she was able to 
muster. This is the record : 

Officers and men in all the Confederate armies, 
February, 1865, aggregate for duty, 160,000; ag- 
gregate present and absent, 358,000 (W. R., iv. 
iii. p. 1 182). 

General Marcus Wright, an expert authority, 
estimates the strength of the Confederate army 
at the close of the zvar thus : 

Present I57'6i3 

Absent ^^7>S^7 

Total 275,000 

And of the Union army thus: 



70 THE NUMERICAL STRENGTH 

Present . ., 797,807 

Absent 202,700 

Total 1,000,507 

If General Adams is right, one cannot but ask, 
where were the other 542,000 men, over and 
above the 358,000 shown by the official report al- 
luded to to have been on the rolls? The 90,000 
men in Northern prisons will not help the situa- 
tion, for they were not exactly available as part of 
the " fighting strength of the Confederacy." Com- 
pare also the fact that there were mustered out of 
the Union army at the end of the war 1,034,000 
men ; and there were, in all the Confederacy, sur- 
rendered Confederate soldiers to the number of 
174.000 only, and this included all who were pa- 
roled, whether in hospital, or at their homes, as 
well as those in arms. 

In conclusion I am reminded of the words of 
General Lee in a letter to General Jubal A. Early, 
shortly after the war, "It will be difficult to 

GET THE WORLD TO UNDERSTAND THE ODDS 
AGAINST WHICH WE FOUGHT." 

Still I cannot help thinking that the statements 
of the adjutant-general of the Confederate armies 
in his official reports, and the testimony of Gen- 



OF THE CONFEDERATE ARMY 71 

eral Lee himself in regard to the numbers in his 
army, will ultimately be considered by the world 
more reliable than the a priori estimates of even 
so careful and honest an investigator as Colonel 
Livermore. 

When immediately after the surrender at Ap- 
pomattox General Meade asked General Lee how 
many men he had in his army, the latter replied 
that he had on his entire front, from Richmond to 
Petersburg, not more than 29,000 muskets. 
" Then," said General Meade, " we had five to 
your one." On the whole I think we may still 
claim for the armies of the Southern Confed- 
eracy the encomium penned by Virgil nearly two 
thousand years ago : 

" Exigui numero, sed bello vivida virtus." 



POSTWORD 

The arguments adduced in the preceding pages 
are beheved by the writer to be vaHd and suf- 
ficient to refute the conclusion reached by Colonel 
Livermore, the Hon. Charles Francis Adams, and 
others, that there was in the Confederacy a 
"minimum of 1,160,000 effectives, to which we 
must add 117,000 men from the Border States, 
giving a total Confederate strength of 1,277,000." 
I have not attempted to give definite figures as to 
the actual enrollment in the Southern armies. 
My argument is of necessity largely based on the 
probabilities of the situation, — it does not pro- 
fess to be demonstrative, or final. But " proba- 
bility is the guide of life "; and I believe I have 
blazed a path by which future students of the sub- 
ject, having before them the muster rolls of the 
Confederate army will be able to reach more defi- 
nite conclusions in this important subject — con- 
clusions, however, not seriously at variance with 
those stated in these pages.* 

* I have not in this Monograph taken account of an 
argument sometimes put forward, drawn from the alleged 
fact that the census of 1890 showed that there were then 
living 432',02O Confederate and 980.724 United States sol- 
diers (or including sailors and marines 1,034,073). But 
the Report on Population, 1890, Part II, p. clxxii, states 
that the figures first quoted are approximate only, and 
"have not been subjected to careful revision and compari- 
son." No positive conclusion, therefore, can be drawn 
from them. Their unreliability is shown by the fact that 
at that very time the War Department estimated that there 
were then living i,34i>332 Federal soldiers. 



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